Saturday, March 28, 2009

I just read a blog by a blogger whom I regularly read. I could not help but notice how many words in the blog ended in "ing".If I counted right there were 23.Then it bothered me that I could not remember what part of speech these words are.Google to the rescue!

-ING WORDS "The present participle form of English verbs ends in -ing. Its most basic use is to describe an action in progress, whether as part of a compound verb, an adjective, or in a participal phrase."

I've been living in KY for almost 7 years now and still notice how often the word "wanting" is used.This is not the case in NJ and CT.Do you suppose it started with a student who did not have enough words in is essay so added some "wanting"s.For example "I am wanting to go to the store" has one more words that "I want to go to the store".

When I spell checked the above in MS Word it want to change the “I am wanting” to “I want”!

Is "wanting" used where you live? (Please post where you live in your answer.)

Of course adding "I am just going to go ahead and" adds even more words, but I am going to go ahead and save that topic for another blog.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Kentucky Confederate Cemetery is in Peewee Valley, Ky. It is the final resting place for 313 Confederate soldiers, who lived out their final days in the Peewee Valley Confederate Home. It is also the home of the Confederate Memorial, which is listed on the National Register of Historical Places. There is a house, just larger that a bird house, that contains a log of the people buried here, giving their grave location and the unit that they served with.

I learned about this from my Geocaching hobby, which is a higher tech hide-and seek. The gentleman in the picture is Ben of the Geocaching team Ben & Grace. Ben passed away recently after he and his wife Grace found their 1,000th cache.

Monday, March 16, 2009

I got a letter from DirecTv saying that certain fees were being increased. I could check on line for the details. I looked at this month's and last month's bill on line to see what the "increases" were:

Sunday, March 15, 2009

I've come up with a possible solution, which took me back to my much younger years:Draw "letters" in the water while “going”.I suppose that dumping a few Cheerios in the water would work too.Just try to sink them!What do you think?

Thursday, March 12, 2009

I am at a Starbucks right now, in Port St. Lucie, Florida. This Starbucks has one annoying feature that I have also seen in other Starbucks: The light in the rest room is motioned controlled! So as you are standing there doing your business, the light goes out. You can no longer "aim" visually, but need to depend on the sound. Of course women don't have this problem as their anatomy puts them much closer to the "target".

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

I’ve been catching up on 2+ weeks of blog reading.I lost touch while getting ready to go to Florida, driving there, and settling in.I finally got Internet service in the place I am renting on Monday, however today I am sitting at a Panera Bread bloging, surfing and having lunch.There is no home spring training game today and a cold spell.Well that is cold for Florida it is in the mid-sixties.

Reading about pita-woman’s and junosmom’s cell phone stories prompted me to write about mine.I left for Florida on 2/23.On 2/20 I went to the Sprint store as I was having a problem with the screen on my cell.It was a flip phone and half the time when you flipped it open the screen was just gray!

Of course I was quickly talked into a new phone at no cost to me, if I signed on for another 2 years. (Well I wanted a new one also.)All phones I was shown had a built in camera. I thought I may at some point actually take a picture with the cell, but certainly would not be posting “random photos from my cell phone” as Passage of a Woman recently did. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I use my cell phone for PHONE calls.

I picked out a phone but asked how to get the pictures out of the phone?I was told that I could use “PictureMail” or buy a data cable to connect the phone to my computer.With “PictureMail” I could email or text message the pictures to anyone.I did not even ask the price of this service and opted for the $15.95 cable.

On Sunday, I took a “test” picture, and then tried to download it to my computer. I hooked up the data cable and the Setup Wizard told me that it had no idea of where to look for the driver or firmware needed for this cable! I went to the Sprint site and could not find anything!

I left for Florida on Monday 2/23, stopping in Acworth, GA and Ocala, FL.On Tuesday evening I visited the Sprint store in Ocala with my problem.I was told that I needed to go to the “SamsungWireless” web site to get the firmware.I visited this site but they did not have what I needed.I then sent an email to customer support.The reply: this phone DOES NOT support download to a computer!

On Thursday, 2/26 I went to the Sprint store in Port St. Lucie FL.A very helpful salesman said he would gladly exchange the phone for one that had the capability I wanted. I explained that I had left the charging cord at home.No problem, but did I have the car charging cord with me?I said no problem it was in the car that was parked in front of the store.The new phone actually has an SD chip that you can store the pictures on.I made the exchange and drove home.After another test picture, I attempted a download.Of course I failed to exchange the data cable and it is a well know fact that each cell phone has a uniquely constructed output port!

Thankfully the Sprint store is near the baseball stadium, so after the Friday game, I exchanged the data cable.I can now actually download pictures from the phone to my laptop.I even uploaded the UCONN Huskies ringer and a picture of my grandchildren as a screen saver! Now if I can only get the phone to ring loud enough so that I can hear it ring when I have it tethered to my belt!

I arrived at my rental home in Florida last Thursday. The owners had had cable TV installed before I arrived. They had been renting long term (1 year) but have switched to short term (weekly or monthly). I have rented for 5 weeks. At my request they ordered Internet, but the soonest it could be installed was yesterday. I have taken my laptop to Starbucks, which is OK for some things.

The installer was to arrive between 11am and 2pm. I told the owner I would be here for him. He called about 10am to ask if he could come sooner. By 10:30am the modem was installed and working. Next I hooked up the wireless router I brought from home, so that I could use the Internet for my laptop and Tivo. What I thought would be a simple task was anything but! I think the problem was that I have DSL at home and cable Internet here.

A visit to the router manufacturer's (Linksys) web site was of little help. I tried a "technical chat" and was told the router was out of warranty and they had little technical support but she could send me an email with some help. Thankfully I asked her what I should do if the email did not help. She gave me the phone number of Technical Service. This number is NOT on the web site.

The email was nothing more than a link to what I had already read on the web site. So I called Tech Serve. Of course I was faced with an automatic response system but told I could dial zero at any time for live help. I decided to try the automated system first. I put my cell on speakerphone. I was very pleased with this service. They had step-by-step instructions. At any time you could repeat the instruction, go back to the previous step or on to the next step. It took about 30-40 minutes of shutting every think down and booting back up (several times) but it worked!